Director of Knowledge Management

With 500+ professionals and 350+ business professionals, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP (www.manatt.com), is a multidisciplinary, integrated national professional services firm known for quality and an extraordinary commitment to clients. The Firm’s groundbreaking approach—bringing together legal services, advocacy and business strategy—differentiates Manatt from its competitors and positions the Firm to provide a distinct and compelling value proposition.

Opportunity

The Director of Knowledge Management is a newly created leadership role that will serve as a critical foundation for this transformation. Reporting directly to the Chief Information Officer, this leader’s core mission is to design, build, and govern the firm’s knowledge infrastructure, including taxonomies, content structures, workflows, and institutional systems. This infrastructure enables Legal AI tools, legal technology, and professional processes to operate more effectively across both the firm’s legal and healthcare consulting practices.

This is not an AI deployment role. Rather, it is the role that enables AI to function effectively for legal and consulting professionals. The ideal candidate understands that AI systems are only as strong as the knowledge they can access and apply, and has built a career focused on developing structured, high-quality knowledge foundations. This individual will be a key contributor to Manatt’s Legal AI strategy and a trusted partner to the Chief Information Officer and AI leadership team, while also extending the firm’s knowledge architecture to meet the distinct needs of its consulting professionals.

Core  Responsibilities

Knowledge Management Systems

• Own the strategy, governance, and operational health of Manatt's knowledge management systems, with a primary focus on iManage and the firm's DMS ecosystem.
• Lead workspace governance initiatives including the ongoing iManage cleanup and rationalization effort to improve discoverability and reduce content sprawl.
• Design and maintain a scalable knowledge taxonomy aligned to Manatt's practice areas and client work, ensuring institutional knowledge is structured for both human and AI retrieval.
• Evaluate and implement integrations between knowledge systems and legal technology tools to enable more effective retrieval and reuse of firm knowledge.
• Establish and enforce knowledge management policies in partnership with Legal Risk Management and the CIO.

Knowledge Architecture for Legal AI & Legal Technology

• Design and govern the firm’s knowledge structures, including taxonomies, metadata, and curated content, to enable Legal AI tools and legal technology to perform effectively.
• Serve as a core contributor to the firm’s Legal AI strategy by partnering with the Chief Information Officer and AI leadership on tool configuration, content readiness, and workflow design.
• Identify and close gaps in institutional knowledge that limit the effectiveness of AI assisted legal work by ensuring content is structured, accessible, and reusable.
• Establish standards for capturing and reusing matter related knowledge to improve future AI assisted drafting, research, and analysis.

Healthcare Consultant Knowledge Management

• Extend the firm’s knowledge management strategy to support the healthcare consulting practice and its distinct workflows, deliverables, and regulatory knowledge needs.
• Build and maintain consulting focused knowledge assets, including content libraries, research frameworks, and engagement playbooks that support AI enabled consulting work.
• Partner with consulting leadership to improve reuse of prior engagement work, regulatory analysis, and industry expertise across matters and clients.
• Enable cross practice knowledge sharing where legal and healthcare consulting work intersect, particularly in health law, policy, and regulatory matters.

Legal Process Knowledge & Practice Enablement

• Partner with practice group leaders to document and systematize legal and consulting workflows in forms that attorneys, staff, and AI tools can effectively use.
• Develop and maintain practice specific knowledge resources, including precedent sets, playbooks, and process guides, in collaboration with practice leadership.
• Build a firmwide knowledge management community that encourages contribution, adoption, and consistent knowledge practices.
• Develop communications and training that reinforce how strong knowledge management improves technology enabled and AI assisted work.

Team and Program Leadership

• Build, lead, and scale the Knowledge Management function, including direct management of KM staff and coordination with related teams.
• Own the knowledge management roadmap and priorities in alignment with the broader technology and AI transformation agenda.
• Measure and report on the impact of the knowledge management program using metrics tied to productivity, knowledge.

Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years of knowledge management experience, with at least 5 years in an Am Law 200 or comparable law firm environment. Legal technology vendor experience alone does not substitute for in-house law firm KM experience.
• Demonstrated familiarity with Legal AI tools—Harvey, Spellbook, DraftWise, CoCounsel, Lexis+ AI, or comparable platforms—and a clear understanding of how knowledge quality and structure affect AI performance. Experience participating in a firm-wide AI initiative is strongly preferred.
• Proven track record of building and leading teams and cross-functional initiatives; this role requires direct management of staff and the ability to influence without authority across practice groups and consulting teams.
• Deep functional expertise with iManage Work or a comparable DMS platform, including governance, taxonomy design, search configuration, and workspace management.
• Experience designing and building knowledge programs—precedent libraries, process documentation, practice playbooks—that attorneys and professionals actually use.

Preferred Qualifications

• JD or advanced degree in library science, information management, health informatics, or a related field.
• Experience supporting a healthcare consulting, advisory, or management consulting practice—including familiarity with healthcare regulatory knowledge and how that knowledge is captured and reused in client engagements.
• Experience with Microsoft 365 integrations in a professional services environment, including SharePoint, Purview, or Teams-based knowledge workflows.
• Familiarity with AI governance frameworks and responsible AI use policies in a professional services context.
• Experience standing up a KM function from an early-stage or transformation baseline—not just maintaining established systems.

The base annual pay range for this role is between $200,000-$230,000. The base pay to be offered will vary and depend on skills and qualifications, experience and location.  A full range of medical, financial and/or other benefits dependent on the position will also be offered.

EEO/AA EMPLOYER/Veterans/Disabled

Manatt is an equal opportunity employer, dedicated to a policy of non-discrimination in employment on any basis including race, color, physical or mental disability, religion, creed, national origin, citizenship status, ancestry, sex or gender (including gender identity, gender expression, status as a transgender or transsexual individual, pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), age (over 40), genetic information, past, current, or prospective service in the uniformed services, sexual orientation, political activity or affiliation, genetic or and any other protected classes or characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, or local law. Consistent with the American Disabilities Act, applicants may request accommodations needed to participate in the application process.